Sweden's Point of Single Contact runs open source

Verksamt, the Swedish government's information hub for new businesses (Point of Single Contact, PSC) is based on open source solutions, shows a report by the open source ICT solutions provider Red Hat. Europe's PSCs are intended to provide businesses with centralised online administrative services. Verksamt is one of the government agencies using Red Hat Linux, Java application server Jboss and web server Apache, Red Hat writes in its study, published on 14 February.

The PSC are one of the requirements of the European Union's Service Directive to provide information about the prerequisites for doing business in a country. Sweden's Verksamt brings together information from three government agencies - the Swedish Companies Registration Office, the Swedish Tax Agency and the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth.

The site is managed by Bolagsverket, Sweden's registration office for companies, which is one of the agencies involved in developing the country's business sector. The agency is also using open source solutions, to date running more than 100 Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform servers.

The study quotes Otto Jagebo, systems architect at Bolagsverket, explaining that the firm's open source solutions provided "the best choice" to support the agency's fast growing IT services offering.

Bolagsverket has been using Red Hat's open source solutions since 2008, the company writes.